Now that the dust has settled, we can truly appreciate the skills and fortitude he brought to the ring. Please list your best memories from his career along with acute ****ysis of his style and abilities. This is the first in a 47 part serial post on Ruiz as I plan on heading off Pollack at the pass by beginning my own study of the heavyweight champs with Ruiz and moving backward to the great NABF titleholder Alex Zolkin.

You have GOT to be kidding me. Ruiz cheated his opponents of their opportunity to win fights WITHIN the rules, and he cheated the fans of seeing the legitimate boxing matches they paid to see. And his connections with King allowed him to get away with it.

Ruiz is a fraud, in the truest sense of the word. A glorified clubfighter who used his connections to get away with repeated rulebreaking to attain a status in this sport his ability didn't merit. He deserves NOTHING but scorn for this.

Something tells me if he had the mustache his manager wore and fought in 1902 with that same style his praises would be never-ending in these parts.

Yes and no.

As an outfighter, he's probably a slicker boxer under modern rules than most of the turn-of-the-century heavyweights. (Scary, isn't it?) A century of adaptation to gloves makes a difference.

In the clinches, though, I don't think his style would translate well to Jeffries' era. He got away with his jab-n'-grab because most fighters don't train for that sort of thing these days, since the rules don't allow it. Ruiz gambled on developing a skillset that skirted the edges of 21st century rules.

In a time machine bout against somebody like Jeffries, he'd be up against an opponent who trained with world-champion wrestlers. Same goes to some degree for other heavyweights from that period. If you've seen Ketchel's footage on Youtube, you probably noticed how the first couple rounds against Papke looked a little like a weird Greco-Roman match with gloves.

Under the early 20th century's permissive clinching rules, Ruiz would probably get out-mauled by anybody close to his own size.

You have GOT to be kidding me. Ruiz cheated his opponents of their opportunity to win fights WITHIN the rules, and he cheated the fans of seeing the legitimate boxing matches they paid to see. And his connections with King allowed him to get away with it.

Ruiz is a fraud, in the truest sense of the word. A glorified clubfighter who used his connections to get away with repeated rulebreaking to attain a status in this sport his ability didn't merit. He deserves NOTHING but scorn for this.

Sounds exactly like Bernard Hopkins to me , just replace King with Hopkins' connections . Bernard is a much more acute example of your statements above.
So I say , if you recognize Bernard then you must consider Ruiz as a clean fighter nonetheless .